ZZZ

I have a Thai driver’s license valid for 5 years. As I now have changed my address in Thailand I need to have the address changed on the license.

As I no longer have a non-immigrant visa (a condition to get the Thai license) will there be any problems when I go to get the address changed on my license?

I have searched the site for information regarding condo ownership transfer and found some answers to my questions but there are still a few things I would like to have confirmed.

As far as I understand the cost of the transfer is a 2.2% transfer fee, a 3% business tax if the property has been owned for less than 5 years and a few thousand bath worth of stamp fees.

What are these percentages based on; I assume it’s based on a pre-determined taxation value?

If based on a pre-determined taxation value where and how can you get hold of this value?

To buy a condo as a foreigner you need to transfer the funds for this from outside Thailand in a major currency. When the funds transfer is done you need to get a FETF from the bank, formerly called tor tor 3.

What amount do you need to transfer? Is it the predetermined taxation value or the actual purchase price?

Is it ok to transfer a larger amount? I will need to furnish the place so additional funds will be needed and I intend to transfer all the funds I need in one transfer.

How long is this FETF valid for the purpose of condo purchase?

Is the FETF cancelled for condo purchase purposes when the condo transfer is done or could you buy several condos on the same FETF?

As I understand this FETF is needed if you sell the property and want to transfer the funds outside Thailand. What happens if the property value has doubled by the time you sell the property, can you still expatriate these funds without problems?

If you sell the property and want to use the funds to buy another property do you need to expatriate the funds and then transfer them back again to get a new FETF?

It seems to be common to split the purchase price in two portions. What is the purpose of this and what are the advantages/disadvantages for the seller and the buyer?

Several bottled water factories in Pattaya were raided recently. Many of them were shut down immediately because the water they bottled was unfit for human consumption. Some of these factories even used fake bottles to make it look like it was a known brand name.

Filter your own water using a good quality UV/cheramic/carbon filtering system (RO is to expensive). A good system would cost from 5,000 to 50,000 bath.

You will need copies of the passports of both your father and your mother. If they are no longer alive, you must give their full names, registered postal address when they were alive and the date they died.

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Why???????

What if they don't have a passport?

Never been attacked but looking at the shocking result (30%) it will probably happen very soon

The result is even more shocking as I would assume most people here are pretty familiar with Thailand and knows how to behave here and what places to avoid.

Looks to me that this could be the end of visa runs to Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Same visa for all countries, when the visa expires you have to leave the area???

I have used a Samsung DVD/HDD for the last 3-4 years. The price when I it bought was Bath 32,000 (Emporium, Bangkok) but think it will be much lower now.

Unfortunately the DVD is only for playback, with the newer units you can dump what you have on the hard disk to a DVD which would be nice if you want to keep something.

The hard disk recording works fine, about 12 hrs recording. The problem, as stated above is that you have to leave the sat decoder box on the channel you want to record.

The great thing with hard disk recording is that whatever you are watching live is buffered on the drive (can set to 30min to 2 hrs). This means that if you get interrupted you just press the pause button. You can also do your own instant replay and slow motion.

Another option is a portable unit like the Archos, http:// www.archos.com. This unit works like the bigger unit but it also has a small IR transmitter that you mount near the sat decoder. The unit will then change sat channels as per your programming of the unit.

Being a portable unit, half the size of a paperback, obviously brings a lot of other possibilities. Cost about Bath 35,000 in Bangkok for the 80Gb model.

Thai Ticket Masters sell tickets to most events, listings can be found on their web page:

http://www.thaiticketmaster.com/

The Bangkok Gig Guide is also a good source:

http://bangkokgigguide.com/

Indonesia will make it compulsory for work permit applicants to be able to read, write and speak Indonesian. This will apply next year and is implemented as they will have to open up their labor market due to various trade agreements.

I guess Thailand must be in a similar position, as a member of ASEAN and signing various FTA's.

Any chance this will happen in Thailand and what would the implications be??

Come up with some ideas on the OP, this is a serious problem that we should try and find a solution to and this petty hair splitting exercise don’t help.

[Everything personal and unrelated to the OP erased. /Meadish]

When they don't buy the magnet as proof they sometimes make me go through the x-ray. Ask them to print a copy for your next medical if that happens.

I usually bring a magnet and show them.

<Off topic post. /Meadish>

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My last post to ZZZ

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Thanks! !

and zzz, just because you don't know about it doesn't make it untrue, believe it or not, I do have a bit of education

I have always thought you were smart but when you said that the family model of women staying home with the children and men working was only a few decades old you really made me wonder. Do you really mean that this is your educated belief?

Bringing up working moms, false ideas of traditional family units (and zzz, just because you don't know about it doesn't make it untrue, believe it or not, I do have a bit of education), breast feeding, and Boo's independence are all beside the point. The point is, what makes you so godalmighty perfect that you can go about criticising people you don't even know?

I ‘m not sure who you are talking about but I have not seen any person being criticized here. There has been criticism and debate about people’s ideas, mine included, but without this there would not really be a discussion would it? You put something out there you must expect it to be challenged and criticized.

Guys, the entire point of the original thread is "why do you have to be rude to farang women?" and then some of you went on attacking all western women just to prove the op's point.

If you read the initial post again you will see it was not at all about "why do you have to be rude to farang women?" The question was far deeper than that questioning the "attitudes of many farang men against western females".

My explanation for this attitude was the natural breakdown of the family unit putting women in a new challenging position that do not conform with the natural state of mind of most men.

Other people have put up other ideas and examples.

Time to change with them, or be left behind in the evolutionary time line.

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I agree fully that we should change but to leave the evolutionary time line would be very dangerous and only result in chaos.

The reason a change is needed is that woman’s situation has drastically changed the last 100 years. From Stone Age until 100 years ago women had a fulltime job taking care of home and children. There were usually at least three generations, various in-laws and numerous children to take care of.

Today with the extended core family gone and an average of 1.23 children there is just not enough to do at home for a woman.

So what should the change be?

Best way would probably be the old Hippie commune way. This would allow the career minded in the commune, women and men, to pursue their interests.

There would also be enough people around to take care of the home and the kids. Housing and house hold costs would be much lower allowing people a good living at today’s prices.

These are just my thoughts, there are probably several other possibilities but I can see the slow death of the core family (sdk, this core family was only around for a short while if that was what you was talking about).

And Oxfordwill, you love to digress. My original point wasn't about breasts or breastfeeding but about this misguided idea that the traditional family unit is a stay at home mom and a working dad. It has only been traditional for a few decades and only in certain classes.  That does not make it "age old".

I'm not sure who told you the traditional family unit has only been around for a few decades. Did he also have a long white beard and big red pants?

First let’s clear up one misconception here. You are talking about mom staying home and dad working. With this you make it sound like mom is just sitting there watching TV while the man is working, supplying everything for the family.

You can go back to today’s primitive societies (PNG head hunters/Sarawak Ibans/Amazone Indians) and you will find that the women there WORK at home with the children’s education/training, gathering and preparing food, manufacturing anything needed for life in the village and other domestic chores.

The men are usually a lazy bunch but the do the hunting and protect the village from other tribes. The point is the women work with things concerning the home the men do things outside the home. This has gone on since Stone Age until now.

At the start it was more of a community living but for, at least, the last few thousand years the extended core family has been the norm in western society.

This Stone Age way of family life is the way we humans are supposed to live.

An interesting experiment to prove this is to observe a group of people (men, women and children) in a relaxed setting, preferable during holidays away from the normal working day.

This could be at a barbeque or at the camping site. You will be surprised to see how the women (even the successful CEO) group together and start with the domestic chores and how the men check so everything looks ok, get the meat ready, start the fire (traditional Stone Age male chore) and open the beer cans (new Stone Age male chore)

There was a survey, a while back, of the lifestyles of wealthy, successful men.

One interesting thing that came out of the survey was that a majority of these men were married to women whose main interest was to take care of the children and the home, typical homemakers.

Most of these women had a lower education than the men and many had worked for the men in a secretarial or domestic capacity.

The people conducting this survey thought about this and checked a similar survey of successful career women to see if these women selected their marriage partner the same way.

The result was a bit shocking as it turned out that most successful career women did not marry.

I'm going to get stuffed, have already paid for a seat in my favourite bar.

I do not need anyone for these things as it is but I would be perfectly ok with that if that was the case. We all rely on each other and if you can not trust anyone enough to rely on him that's your problem.

this is quite funny, where in my post do I say that I don't let some one help me as rely upon is the wrong word, I said I don't NEED anyone to help not that I don't accept help if it is offered. Different thing entirely.

I left school at 16 & got married at 28, are you suggesting I should have sat at home & not get a job or tried to advance my life myslef until my husband came along??? How funny, really I am LMAO.

Also until you know me & know the kind of economic background or family life I grew up in them you have no place to put down my pleasure at my abilities or success, what you call bragging is what everyone who knows me considers to be an acheivement. Some people never get to travel overseas & yes that is in the UK too & some can never afford to own their own home, so that fact that I am proud of myself for doing both when a lot of people from my background can't is a good thing IMO, so stuff that in your pipe & smoke it.

I don't really see why this should upset some people so much, quite hilarious really

Well, you did not say or even imply that you did accept help if offered so how could I have known?

Anyway, what is funny is that you do turn things around all the time to be in the right and this one of the things that turns men off western women.

In any case I do want to apologize if anything I have said was taken as an attack on you personally, that was never my intention. This thread is about the general phenomena of western men slagging off western women and I just used some of your comments as examples.

I very much admire your accomplishments and you should be proud of them.

Great point sbk about double standards & so true

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About those double standards:

If a man is bold a woman could be confident, no need to be bragging.

If man is cutting a woman could be critical, no need to be bitchy.

If a man is pride a woman could display dignity, no need to be arrogant.

Generally this is how it works; men enter a relationship mainly for three reasons:

1. Readily available sex

2. To get the satisfaction of giving protection and security to someone.

3. To be taken care of, mainly ego boasting.

I still standby my initial post.

The later posts in this thread, about staying home or working, reflects on points 2 and 3 above. With the majority of western women working points 2 and 3 are really out the window and as for point 1, well this is Thailand.

Here is a link from the Land Transport Office in Phuket describing how to get an International License if you are a farang with a Thai license, expect it would be similar (but different) for a Thai. Look at the bottomof the page.

http://www.phuketdir.com/pkttransport/

Makes perfect sense.

I've been doing exactly what they are talking about for many years. No breakfast, one meal a day whenever I'm hungry, nothing at all 1-2 days a week.

Have no problems at all with this way of eating, never sick, perfect weight and feel great.

As far as I know, in Thailand these are issued at the same place as you get the normal license, at least in Bangkok.

You need a valid license, photos, and I think you must have had your normal license for at least a year.

Yes Boo, think compliment when you read “ego boost” even if you can boost someone’s ego in many other ways. I do mean something sincere but I also mean something that is done or said specifically for the purpose of boosting someone’s ego (complementing), not just as idle chatter just to say something as your complements must be as they are not meant to boost anyone’s ego, not sure how a compliment could not boast your ego?

Anyway, this ego boosting (complimenting) should of course be mutual and sincere.

ZZZ, there is no constant bragging but again, if you BOTHER to read my posts then you would see that I am expressing the view that no one should have to stop being who they are just because someone like you doesn't like it. If my posts about how self reliant I am pisses you off, then again tough, don't read em.

Your post on how self reliant you are do come out as bragging. Please state at the begining of your posts if it's more bragging so I can stop reading them before it's to late.

You say that you are expressing the view that no one should have to stop being who they are just because someone like me doesn't like it. I do NOT agree with this there is always room for improvements, even for you. If you have a bad habit, like bragging, you could learn to stop this, for your own sake.

Do you need anyone in your life to earn money for you, buy you a house, cook your food or clean your clothes, I don't & am very happy for it thanks for asking, as life would be quite difficult if I couldn't.

This “bragging” could be compared with men telling a woman to her face that she looks really fat and ugly as this would hit the evolutionary core instinct of a woman to attract men.

Don't know where you get this from but as from reading your posts I see we have complety differering views, so I'l just say, errr

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Are you asking me where I got that women wants to attract men from ????????

Silly me, maybe I'm mistaken.

I think I’m the one guilty of stating that a man needs to have his ego stroked. Many seems to have a problem with this so let me explain what I meant by this.

This has absolutely nothing to do with how secure a man is but it makes the difference of him being happy or pissed off.

Boo’s frequent, un-necessary, posts on how self reliant she is makes men pissed off. It’s this constant “bragging” using feminist clichés that makes men pissed off with western women. Most Asian women would never lower themselves to this.

We men are not as stupid as we may look, we know that women are our equal (in many ways superior) but we don’t like to have this constantly crammed down our throats.

This “bragging” make western women look desperate, much less in control and totally insecure.

This “bragging” also hit the inherent evolutionary core of the male being the one providing security and protection.

This “bragging” could be compared with men telling a woman to her face that she looks really fat and ugly as this would hit the evolutionary core instinct of a woman to attract men.

These and other core values will not change in a hurry so we need to learn how to live with them.

We need to understand each other and not just think of ourselves to make it work. We need to stroke each others egos constantly to make life livable.

Just imagine if everyone said exactly what they were thinking all the time???